Alphabet Merges ‘Deep Mind’ & ‘Google Brain’ Teams Into New A.I. Powerhouse ‘Google DeepMind’

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is merging its DeepMind and Brain AI teams into a new unit named Google DeepMind. This reorganization aims to speed up advancements in AI research and development, ensuring that the company’s general AI systems are developed both responsibly and safely.

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis will lead the new division, while Jeff Dean, co-founder of Brain, will serve as Chief Scientist for both Google and Google DeepMind. Hassabis anticipates that the collaboration between DeepMind and Brain will lead to the next wave of world-changing breakthroughs in AI.

The DeepMind and Brain teams have been instrumental in the foundations of modern AI. Founded in 2010, DeepMind has been responsible for significant advancements like AlphaGo, the deep learning program that defeated one of the world’s top-ranked Go players, Lee Sedol, in 2016. The company’s AlphaFold program is also widely used for predicting 3D protein structures from amino acid sequences.

Google’s Brain team, established in 2011, has contributed to projects such as Google Translate and TensorFlow, an open-source software library that allows users to train their own neural networks.

Tech giants like Google and Microsoft have been investing heavily in AI development. In February 2023, Google partnered with ChatGPT competitor Anthropic to create reliable and responsible AI solutions. In the same month, the company unveiled Google Bard, a conversational AI service that garnered mixed reviews.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai remains optimistic about AI development, pointing out that compared to other technologies, AI has attracted more scrutiny early in its lifecycle. He believes that the growing concerns around AI will contribute to more serious discussions about the technology’s implications.